3 professionals I'll reach out to: Michael Burawoy, Peter Thomas, and Mark Edward Rupert.

Michael Burawoy is a professor at UC Berkeley who works in the Sociology Department. He has published many books, most, if not all, concerning sociology and marxism in some way. He was president of the American Sociological Association, president of the International Sociological Association, founding editor of Global Dialogue, and secretary and co-chair of the Berkeley Faculty Association.

The next professional I'll reach out to is Peter Thomas who has worked at multiple different universities in Europe and currently works at Brunel University London. He is a historian of political thought and philosophy and a political theorist. Many of his contributions were of the thoughts of Gramsci, which would greatly help me with my study. He has published many books on Gramcsism and Marxism.

The third professional I'll reach out to is Mark Edward Rupert, who has written books and articles on Marxism and Gramsci alike. He currently is a professor at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University.

Lastly, I'll be reaching out to a professor at Cornell University. He taught a class titled "Gramsci and Cultural Hegemony" in the Spring term of 2022, alongside many published research papers and other college classes concerning Marxism and other philosophies.

Essential question: Is Gramsci still relevant today, and if so, how can we apply his ideology to a society completely different from the form in which he grew up and structured his whole philosophy around?

I have heard back from two professors. The first one is Mark Edward Rupert. I plan to read more into his resources and developed questions upon my reading. I'll be including some commentary here and there within my podcast following Rupert's advice and answers. The second professor who reached back to me we Geoffrey Carter W. Waite. I'm not sure yet if I plan to create one whole podcast, but if so, I'll probably base the questions for Waite on the answers provided by Rupert. This will ensure that some overlap can occur between the two professors, making it so the podcast has one general theme instead of two different ones. 

I'll be using Anchor as my program to create this podcast. I've used it before in the past and its setup makes it simple to edit and publish. The audio recorded also sounds decent considering I won't (nor own) any professional equipment. I'll probably take inspiration from many different podcasts as I cycle through a lot of them throughout my week. Some of the major ones are Blowback, Throughline, Pod Save America, and Dictators. Maybe even Philosophize This, but they don't really hold any interviews on their episodes.